Bad As We Want to Be

Last year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner began with a very special introduction from one of the few members of Congress most Americans could identify by sight: Francis Underwood, the ladder-climbing sociopath played by Kevin Spacey in Netflix’s House of Cards. “You know my motto, Ed,” said Spacey to Fox News’s Ed Henry, then-president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “You scratch my back, I won’t lacerate yours.”

A short video that played after Spacey spoke exemplified a rare bipartisan convergence to get something done. Alongside a number of other politicians and journalists, John McCain, Mike Bloomberg, Valerie Jarrett and Steny Hoyer were shown in conversation with Underwood, the Democratic congressman from South Carolina who, when we last left him at the conclusion of the series’ first season, was the House majority whip. “I may lie, cheat and intimidate to get what I want, but at least I get the job done,” Underwood said at the video’s end. “So I hope some of you were taking notes.”

Right on cue, the room united in uproarious laughter. We’ve seen something similar these past few days, ever since the second season debuted on Netflix on Friday. But the across-the-aisle affection for the nefarious—even criminal—exploits at the center of the show raise a question: Why has Washington, D.C., been so enthusiastic about the grim, cynical funhouse version of itself that appears in House of Cards?

When it comes to anti-heroic dramas, this is more common than you’d think. The advertising industry has eagerly embraced the womanizing, alcoholic Don Draper of Mad Men, and the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico—the setting for Breaking Bad—has turned the locations frequented by Walter White and his compatriots into a cottage tourist industry. It’s true that Essex County, New Jersey took pains to distance itself from the mobsters of HBO’s The Sopranos, but, oddly, nothing of the sort is happening in the image-conscious Capital. In fact, in an odd effort to align itself with the show’s plotlines, the office of Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) actually sent out a press release on Wednesday touting the mention of an initiative similar to one that Slaughter had led (“The reference occurs at the 29:45 mark of the fifth episode, titled ‘Chapter 17’ of season two,” the release helpfully points out).

Shouldn’t this surprise us? Why would a town so careful about presentation so gleefully embrace a show that treats politicians as either imbecilic or deeply corrupt, and treats most established journalists as cynical, selfishly motivated and malleable? For a time, the popularity of House of Cards in the District was something of an open secret; a BuzzFeed article published two weeks after the show’s first-season premiere reported that “aides who gushed about the show off the record subsequently refused to be interviewed […] fearing it might reflect poorly on their bosses or themselves.” Mike Long, the press secretary for real-life House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, took to Twitter to clarify that his boss had nothing in common with Frank Underwood.

Since then, Hill staffers, journalists and politicians alike all seemed to finish watching the first season and something began to change. The less salient aspects of the show collapsed under the weight of a simple truth: House of Cards makes Washington and its two wonkiest industries—journalism and politics—look really cool, even as it implicitly attacks them at their very roots.

House of Newt

Watching with the Gingriches

Curious about how the former House speaker and his wife, a former Hill staffer, are reacting to the new season of House of Cards? Yeah, so were we.

Here are the takeaways, as reported by the Gingriches:

1. “Kevin Spacey is brilliant and his performance alone would justify the series. The script is good, the other actors are solid, but Spacey is brilliant.”

2. [Spoiler alert!] “Frank Underwood is a far more aggressive vice president than Joe Biden.”

3. “Frank Underwood runs the Senate more ruthlessly than Harry Reid (actually in a style reminiscent of Speaker Tom Reed).”

4. “Tea parties should have viewing parties. House of Cards could be a great recruiting tool.”

5. “Claire Underwood is a study in ruthless professionalism.”

6. “Riding the Metro is a little scarier now. House of Cards reminds us to watch our backs while waiting for the train.”

7. “As Republicans we are happy that our party is portrayed as somewhat stubborn and a challenge to manage, while Democrats are shown as corrupt, conniving, and viciously ambitious. Maybe House of Cards is actually a reality show.”

Over the past year, House of Cards’s political accolades have continued to amass. In December, the show received an endorsement from no less than President Barack Obama, who asked Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, on a visit to the White House, if he’d brought along advance copies of the show’s second season. “I wish things were that ruthlessly efficient,” the president joked. “It’s true. I like Kevin Spacey. Man, this guy’s getting a lot of stuff done.”

The lines have only gotten blurrier from there. McCarthy—Underwood’s real-life alter-ego, whose staffers once distanced him from the show—appeared in a recent web video where he and other members of Congress repeated memorable lines from the first season. In short, the actual majority whip was willing to associate himself with a fictional politician who once held his office, and who’s best known for his ruthlessness and his penchant for murder. (In fact, on The Daily Show on Tuesday, Spacey told Jon Stewart that he’d followed McCarthy around Washington as part of his research for the role, and the two men ruminated about executing federal lawmakers. “If I could kill just one member of Congress,” Spacey says McCarthy told him, “I wouldn’t have to worry about another vote.”)

McCarthy’s cooperation isn’t the only thing helping the show—the media has played an even greater role in abetting the Beltway hype and in creating a sense of authenticity. Cameos aplenty appear in this new season, and include many of the big-name media personalities you’d expect: Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher and Chris Matthews. But the show also manages to slip in a few deeper cuts, including CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield, Bloomberg TV’s Julianna Goldman and even a comparatively tougher-to-place print journalist—Matt Bai, formerly of The New York Times Magazine, recently of Yahoo News—who struggles to get an interview with Claire Underwood before producing a much ballyhooed longform magazine article (further demonstrating, of course, that glamor and pivotal plot turns are found in oddly Washington-esque places on this show—like, say, long magazine profiles in thought-leader publications).

Using media appearances in this way does a lot to increase the show’s verisimilitude, but only for its core audience; it’s safe to say that the average House of Cards viewer wouldn’t be able to distinguish each of the show’s many professional journalists from the fictional reporters generally played by actors who populate other shows like it.